The present invention relates generally to the field of thermal control and/or conditioning of a device under test, such as a semiconductor wafer or die undergoing electrical testing, or other devices that may be in use or undergoing testing. More particularly, it relates to an apparatus and method for thermal control and/or conditioning of such device.
Various techniques have been developed to maintain the temperature of a semiconductor device at or near a predetermined set point temperature. For example, such systems and methods are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,489,793, U.S. Pat. No. 6,476,627, U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,225 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,821,505, all herein incorporated by reference in their entireties.
In application, the area available to thermally condition a device varies from application to application. Units typically are thermally conditioned using custom tooling, particularly with respect to heat sink assemblies used to maintain temperature. Thus, using conventional products, a user wishing to conduct testing on a device must acquire a custom-made heat sink assembly created to match the specifications of the device under test. In turn, the user wishing to test devices having different specifications must incur additional costs in purchasing or creating several custom heat sink assemblies. In addition, a user will incur additional time needed to install and setup a custom-made heat sink assembly for each different device under test, which results in longer development cycles.
Therefore, there is a need for a device that minimizes the level of customization needed to test different devices. Specifically a device that allows a generic heat sink assembly to be used to thermally condition a wide range of devices having different physical properties.